Loving God and Caring for Creation

While Kurt is busy with work I thought I would be a good big brother and pick up the slack in posting rants. So here goes:

The call from evangelical Christians for a more responsible environmental policy is starting to be noticed. Both politicians and the news media are discovering that evangelical Christians believe that the Bible demands they support responsible efforts to care for creation. The New York Times has an article today noting this.

NY Times, Nov. 7: With increasing vigor, evangelical groups that are part of the base of conservative support for leading Republicans are campaigning for laws that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists have linked with global warming.
...."We believe that we have a rightful responsibility for what the Bible itself challenges," Mr. Cizik, the National Association of Evangelicals vice president for governmental affairs said. "Working the land and caring for it go hand in hand. That's why I think, and say unapologetically, that we ought to be able to bring to the debate a new voice."

For once the NYTimes has recognized that evangelicals can be intelligent articulate advocates for what are perceived to be liberal causes. Maybe in time they will come to catch a glimmer of an understanding of what motivates the mainstream evangelicals in America. That we're not the knee-jerk, Bible thumpin', lime-light loving, self-appointed spokesmen they usually cover. Someone must have put a copy of Sojourners magazine in the executive washroom. Jim Wallis, Sojourners' editor, is unabashedly evangelical in his faith, and provocatively liberal in his politics. But he refuses to allow his faith to be co-opted by secular causes. Something that has happened to far too many politicians. Consider this senator's response as reported in the same article.

A major obstacle to any measure that would address global warming is Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and an evangelical himself, but a skeptic of climate change caused by human activities.
....Mr. Inhofe said the vast majority of the nation's evangelical groups would oppose global warming legislation as inconsistent with a conservative agenda that also includes opposition to abortion rights and gay rights. He said the National Evangelical Association had been "led down a liberal path" by environmentalists and others who have convinced the group that issues like poverty and the environment are worth their efforts.

I don't know about Mr Inhofe's faith, but I am certain that it is exactly issues like poverty and the environment that are worth the efforts of myself and my fellow evangelicals. I worship the Living God, not the idol of Conservatism. The presumption of conservative Republicans that they can set the moral agenda for faithful Christians is as repugnant to me as the way in which Democrats are dismissive of the significance of faith in our lives.